


You're No Funny Valentine

by leiascully



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Community: smut_tuesdays, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-10
Updated: 2009-03-10
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:16:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helo comes home and takes his wife in his arms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're No Funny Valentine

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: late S2, pre-occupation  
> A/N: For [**ninamazing**](http://ninamazing.livejournal.com/): I'm glad we can push each other's boundary and write porn in public coffee houses. Yes! Title is from Jonatha Brooke's "It Matters Now". Happy [**smut_tuesdays**](http://community.livejournal.com/smut_tuesdays/)!  
> Disclaimer: _Battlestar Galactica_ and all related characters belong to Ronald Moore, NBC Universal, Sci-Fi Channel, and Sky One. No infringement is intended and no profit is made from this.

Helo comes home and takes his wife in his arms.

Gods, he thinks, if only it were that simple.

Helo comes home to his empty married quarters and doesn't look at the place in the corner where Hera's crib should be. He unbuttons his jacket with weary fingers. These days he understands the whiskey reek of Tigh's breath - at the end of the day, his fingers curl naturally around the shape of a glass, and it's just as well he and Athena don't keep booze around. He strips to tanks and shorts and collapses on their little sofa, lacing his fingers together over his chest, waiting. His chin nods to his chest and he lets himself doze.

He wakes up when the hatch squeaks open, Athena shoving her way in. She pushes the hatch to and spins the lock closed. He watches her shake her hair loose and arch her back to stretch her shoulders. Boomer did the same thing after a long patrol. He floats in that moment of cognitive dissonance, the now-familiar suspension of disbelief.

He could say that what they have was love at first sight.

He could say that he'd known her for years before anybody made a move.

He could say she was with someone else then.

The problem with their marriage is that there are too many truths. The problem with their marriage is that there's no problem with their marriage.

Back on Caprica, it seemed like a dream come true. Sharon, crusading to his rescue, a shoulder to lean on and her safety off. This is better, the way they have a moment to rest against each other at the end of the day. But it's confusing. Not simple. When they're not on the run, he has time to think and overthink. He's strung between then and now, between the memory of Boomer and the aching, incredible reality of Athena.

Athena sighs and turns and her face lights up underneath the fatigue. The dimple in her cheek begs for a kiss, bringing back a quick flash of memory that heats him from toes to crown. He jerks his head at her, beckoning, and she shrugs out of her flightsuit. By the time she clambers onto his lap with another sigh, he's more than awake. She settles against his chest with a murmur. He rubs her back with one hand.

"Hey, beautiful."

"Hey," she says, all husky. He touches each articulated bone of her spine through the fabric of her tanks. She feels too light in his arms, but solid and alive. He wishes some days that they'd mustered out - they could be in a tent down on New Caprica, her lounging on a cot, him stirring a pot of soup, feeding her up. Helo wonders if they would be happy or restless without the uniforms and the structure. At least here they have the Admiral's blessing. If it takes a warning hand on his sidearm and the flash of light on his collar studs to quiet the mutters and the rumors, so be it. He has become defensive, fiercer.

Sometimes he misses easy-going Helo. Sometimes he misses easy.

Sharon stirs. "How was CIC?"

Helo considers. "About as much fun as sifting an asteroid belt for tylium."

"That bad, huh?" She kisses his neck, lipping the chain of his tags. His cock stirs, pressing into her leg. She's warm. She smells good. He takes a deep breath of her and lets out all the frustration of the day.

"Gettin' better," he says. "How was the CAP?"

"I was sifting an asteroid belt for tylium," she says wryly.

He winces. "That's rough."

She strokes his cheek with cool fingertips. "So are you. Did you forget to shave?"

"Nah," he says, rubbing his chin against her shoulder. "Just figured it worked for Saul Tigh."

"Uh uh," she says, shaking her head. Her hair tickles his face. "That's not happening."

"You sure?" he teases. "'Cause I think I could really pull it off."

"God, no!"

"No," he says, "I'm gonna do this. It'll be great. You'll love it."

She slaps at him in protest. "I wish I had a way to tweak your programming when you're being this dumb. You and your organic matrix."

"You can reprogram me any day," he says, shoving himself up where he's sliding off the couch, making sure to keep hold of her, making sure to press her hips against the growing bulge in his shorts. "It's just about incentives instead of code."

"You are so easy," she says, rolling her eyes and shifting subtly against him.

"Something ought to be," he says, and can't keep a little edge of bitterness out of his voice.

"Karl," she says, tender like Boomer never, ever was to him, and the cold place in him thaws a little. Athena kisses him, and she's got all their history inside her, the nights he stared across the triad table at Boomer, the hours in the Raptor swapping anecdotes. He wants to unwrap her some days, trace the wires with one fingertip, find the place where her memories are stored and tease out the ones he recognizes. He knows there aren't wires. There's no chip to find and upload, no way to keep her his forever. Having left her people, she's nearly as mortal as he is, their situation as fragile and as susceptible to flood, fire, or famine. Underneath the skin he loves there are bones and veins and muscles. He knows it. He's felt her tense under his hands enough times now: she's real, held together with sinew and ligament and stubborn hope like anybody in these times.

He knows she's real because when he sinks his teeth into that one place on her shoulder, she kicks him every time. She's apologized for it, breathless sorries as she clings to him. It's like the spot near his spine where she digs her fingers in that sets his whole side tingling. He knows she's real because she comes home and she's glad to see him, but sometimes there's that look in her eyes, too, like she's remembering what they've lost, thinking of what they might have had, thinking about what they might have never had if she were still someone else. It's not the dream or the myth. It's as real and as awful as flesh and blood.

But gods, for now she's kissing him, and she tastes like she always has, and she feels like he always hoped, her knees tight against his thighs. The brief guilty thought flits through his mind that at least with no baby in the room, they don't have to hesitate before he strips her tanks and her bra over her head. She breaks away long enough to let him and then her mouth is on his again, hot and hungry. He cups her breasts in his palms. The buds of her nipples nudge against his life line and his heart line and he thinks that she is both those things: she's his destiny, and if it took the worlds ending, at least he has her.

She shimmies out of her shorts and simultaneously strips him out of his tanks, her mouth a hundred places at once. The friction teases him; he pushes his hips up and she shifts away, in control as usual. "Mmm, that's what this day needed," she says against his neck. "All that skin."

"There's about to be more," he says, and pins her for a moment as he shucks off his own shorts. She has him back flat against the couch and pinned before he knows it, all that surprising strength. She holds him down until he is straining against her hands at his wrists, grinning up at her, her hair falling over both their faces as she kisses him. The light makes a halo around her body when she arches back to tie her hair up. He wonders if it's some kind of electromagnetic _thing_, some Cylon phenomenon, or just that she's so godsdamn beautiful it hurts.

Athena catches him staring and bares her teeth at him like a wild thing. She leans forward very slowly, tracing patterns on his chest with her fingertips. He bites his lip and narrows his eyes, managing not to make a sound until her nails catch that sensitive spot under his third rib and he has to groan. His cock twitches, seeking her skin. She grins in victory.

"Baby, please," he says, freeing his pinned hand and catching her wrists. It floors him that she's so delicate and so strong, titanium under porcelain and silk. He can hold her with one hand. She could break him with four fingers. "That tickles."

"Oh, not so tough now, eh, Captain?" she taunts him. "Taken down pretty easily there. You should guard your soft spots."

"Maybe I just can't stand waiting," he says.

"You humans," she sighs, "you've got no _patience_."

"Neither do you," he reminds her.

"True," she says, and wraps her fingers around his very gratified cock, sliding down with a little moan that almost makes him come right then. She grinds all the way onto him, until the sharp bone of her pubis notches against his hips. She tips her head back, one gorgeous line from throat to belly and down her thighs, and he strokes his hands down her front, helping her balance over him. She's hot and wet around him and his universe shrinks to her body, the structure of her, the incredible construction of her. He groans and she shifts, rocking against him, and then they both groan, and his heart is melting along with his brain, too full to contain the wonder of her.

She's real because he loves her. She's real because she loves him. He's real because she loves him.

She pushes down, rocks up, and pushes down. It's hydraulics, he thinks, his brain separating from his body in a strange moment of lucidity. Hydraulics and biology and chemistry and gods, he's a machine if she is, the way his body always responds to her, pre-programmed to tighten, to heat, blood rushing to the places where she touches him. He's wired, she's wired, everybody's coded and buggy. This is bigger than they are, older and more compelling. He thrusts up into her, gritting his teeth as the pleasure surges through him. She tightens around him, gasping, and he touches her in the place he knows, two fingertips at the cleft of her legs, and she's gone, her head lolling on her own shoulder. She braces herself over him and he pauses, kissing the inside of her elbow, nipping at the vein that stands out. She pulses around him; he pulses inside her, restless, trying to hold onto his control.

"Gods," she says after a moment, blowing out a breath so that her bangs jump and unstick from her forehead.

"God," he reminds her, panting between words. "One true Cylon god, remember?"

"Right now that's you," she says, and leans down to kiss him, the taste of salt on her lips. She rocks back on him, grinding down until he can't breathe. She finds that spot on his ribs again with her fingers, pressing right _there_, and gods, how does she do it? She _knows_ him, in and out, and he doesn't even care if there are X-rays in her eyes or sensors in her fingertips, because she's the best thing he's ever known, and together, they're a world, self-contained, all possibility and strife.

Lines blur. Colors blend. He gasps, jerked out of his body by ecstasy, too much for his skin. She's his only anchor, her arms the port that calls him home.

He holds her afterwards, cradling her tight as she falls asleep. She's sweaty against him, the jut of knee and hip and elbow uncomfortable as she shifts in her dozy haze, but she's real. She's true. He nods off holding onto that, his back to the room that's too big for the two of them.


End file.
